Monk Playtest: Encounter 1

My intrepid party as they venture into the cave-like catacombs. I couldnt find my giant frog mini for Frog's frog, so I used a bluespawn burrower instead. I just used stats for a boar animal companion and called it good.

Basically I laid out a shitload of tiles from a single set of Caverns of Dread, or whatever, and then picked three spots that I figured would make for ideal encounters. As I said before, each of the kruthik began the encounter burrowed underground, so I just rolled Stealth checks and any party member whose Passive Perception beat it got to act in the surprise round. This generally meant that Sir Frog was the only guy able to do anything.

Because his Passive Perception was so high, this also meant that Sir Frog was the man on point. And by man on point I mean the damage bitch since I generally just had kruthik charge the nearest character. The above pic is how the first surprise round of encounter 1 looked.And this is the end of round one, I think. It was a pain in the ass to try and keep as many characters as possible away from their Aura, and I figured my best bet was to have the monk and ranger tank when they could.

This should be the end of round 2. I dont know if the kruthik hatchlings (represented by a rot scarab swarm) were prone or actually dead. I'm pretty sure they are dead, since I recall having Fyst use dragon's tail to knock the young prone and then roll his striker damage onto the hatchlings. I think all in all Snake ended up taking 2 damage, but dealt the most out of everyone since his Strength and Charisma were both 18.

And thats that. This battle took all of three rounds to resolve, and no one had to use Second Wind or down a healing potion. I think everyone except Snake used their encounters, but really after the hatchling and young were taken out it was a simple matter of just ganging up on the last one, and between four strikers? Shyeah.

One thing I didnt mention about the monk was how well the descriptions of the powers and their effects fit the narrative very well. Crane's wings deals damage and a push, but makes for some awesome visuals as you imagine Fyst leaping over his companions, smashing his fist into the head of a kruthik, and then whirling around to splatter the hatchling on the cavern wall as it lunges at him. In the third encounter (which I will post once I finish altering the size of the images and exporting them) with the kruthik adult, I'd envisioned him using drunken monkey to cause the adult to go spinning out of control, scything apart the young nearby or just landing on top of them.